calculating her next move.
The plates were cleared and Zara’s stomach growled. Andres would pay for that.
Kairos stood, and so did Tabitha. They both made their way to the front of the room, and as they did, the rest of the room stood too. Some sort of sign of respect, she imagined. She followed suit, but as she did, Andres took hold of her arm and started to lead her away from the table.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t respond; he only led her through the crowd, using them as a shield to make their exodus less conspicuous.
They slipped through a side door in the ballroom and out into the corridor, and he pushed her back into the alcove they’d been in before, pressing her back against the wall.
“Do not test me,” he said, his voice low, hard.
“Why not?” she asked. “You are intent on testing me.”
“But I am the one with the power, little one, and you are not.”
Zara didn’t think about her next move until it was too late. Fueled by anger, by frustration, she allowed herself to be led by instinct. She reached down, cupping the most vulnerable part of Andres’s body. “Is that so? Then perhaps I should find ways to seize some of my own control.”
Her pulse thundered in her ears, blood roaring through her veins like a beast. Rage, and something else on the heels of it that she couldn’t readily name. Something that made her shake. Made her ache.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” he asked, his voice deeper suddenly, huskier.
She leaned in, her teeth scraping his neck. “Both.”
He held her tightly, keeping her close, his dark gaze intense on hers, his grip like iron. “You bit me, you little monster.”
“Your concerns were not unfounded. I may bite you again, and rest assured, unlike yours, my threats are not empty.”
“I do hope that your current threat isn’t empty.” He rolled his hips forward slightly, emphasizing just what threat he meant.
Heat flooded her face, but she didn’t release her hold on him. She would not allow him to see that she was affected. She was issuing a threat to his person; she was not touching him for the sake of a thrill.
Still, she became incredibly conscious of the heat of his body. Of the fact that he was growing hard beneath her touch.
How was that possible? How could he possibly be aroused by this?
She realized her breaths had grown shorter, faster, that she ached in places that had never been touched by another person. That she was aroused, as well. And that, more than anything, made her want to squeeze down on him. To hurt him. To make him sorry for putting either of them in this position. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be stuck in the palace, engaged to a man she didn’t know. Trapped in another life that wasn’t of her choosing.
She found herself tightening her fingers around his arousal. She looked down, caught the glitter of her engagement ring on the hand that was squeezing him. Then she looked back up at his face. A mistake.
She barely had a chance to register the hot, angry glitter in his dark eyes before he closed the distance between them, his mouth crashing down onto hers.
The force of him pushing her back against the wall shifted her hand, her palm sliding over his hardness before coming to rest on his flat stomach, crushed between their bodies as he angled his head and slipped his tongue between her lips.
He proved then what he’d said before. He had the power. She could do nothing, not in this moment. Nothing but simply surrender to the heat coursing through her, to the electrical current crackling over her skin with a kind of intensity she’d never even imagined existed.
His hands were firm and sure on her hips, his body pinning her to the wall as he sought restitution for her attempt at claiming control.
He shifted, grabbing hold of her wrists, freeing her trapped hands for just a moment before lifting them, pinning them back against the wall and pressing his body more completely against hers. “You want a fight?” He growled the words against her mouth. “I can give you a fight, Princess. We don’t have to do this the easy way.” He angled his head, parting his lips from hers, kissing her neck. She shivered, fear and arousal warring for pride of place inside her. “But if you want to test me, you have to be prepared for the results. I do not know what manner of man you have been exposed to in the past, but I am not one that can be easily manipulated.”
He rocked his hips against hers, showing her full evidence of the effect she was having on his body. She should be angry, disgusted. Instead, she felt all the more powerful. She hadn’t hurt him, but she had succeeded in making him react. She not only enraged him; she turned him on. She had spent so much of her life being ignored that eliciting such a powerful response from such a man gratified her in ways she never could have anticipated.
She didn’t know a kiss could be so many different things. That it could serve so many purposes. That it could make her feel hot, cold, afraid, enraptured. But it did. It was everything, and nothing she should ever have allowed to happen between them.
But it had happened. And it was too late to stop it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to stop it.
Her heart was thundering so hard she was afraid it might crack through her chest, before attempting to beat straight through his.
She was furious. With him, with this. She wanted to punish him. Wanted to make him pay. For making her feel helpless. Even when she had been captive in the palace in Tirimia, she thought there was hope. But here, she wasn’t kept in bondage and chains, wasn’t made to stay put with threats. Here, she was simply stripped of options. Shown how small she was in the vast context of the palace, of a country she didn’t know. She couldn’t go back to her own country, and Andres knew that. Couldn’t return to the only home she knew for fear of the safety of her protectors.
He had made her famous now. Putting a ring on her finger and parading her in front of all those people. Had stolen her anonymity. And beyond that, she had no money, no clothes beyond the far too formal princess wardrobe that had been procured for her upon arrival in Petras.
She wanted him to understand that helplessness. To feel it too.
If he was going to take her choices from her, then she would make certain he felt the weight of that. She would be a millstone around his neck. His punishment.
She flexed her hips against his, pushing back, changing the angle of her head and leaning in, claiming his mouth with her own before biting his lower lip. He growled, pressing her hands more firmly against the wall, deepening the kiss, consuming her as if she were the dessert they were missing in the ballroom.
She had spent very little time imagining what it would be like to be kissed. She had craved kind smiles and closeness more than anything physical. But she had thought about it a small amount. And when she had, it had been gauzy. Soft. She had imagined slow, gentle touching. Something sweet and slow-building. She had expected to feel a kiss only on her lips.
She had not expected this explosion. Had not expected a knot of emotion and need that she couldn’t even begin to untangle. Had not expected to feel the kiss in every part of herself, over her skin,
